Thursday, April 16, 2015

The spaniard Hugo Teso has spent years warning about aircraft INFOSEC problems and how easy it would be for someone malicious hijack their communications. It's been said by an independent agency which conducts research for the US government. We'll also talk about a new virus which attacks sales points in physical stores, banks which do not report about their security breaches and companies trapped in the cyberwar crossfire.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) of the United States has just issued a study ensuring that its airlines do not pay enough attention to gaps which could jeopardize their passengers safety. Among other failures, emphasizes that WiFi connections used by pilots are the same as those used by passengers, so it would allow to spy or manipulate these communications.
Back on the ground, a new malware dedicated to attack point of sales in physical stores appears. They call it Punkey and, like many such viruses, infects shops payment machines, summoning all credit card numbers passing through the site. It is recalled that these viruses work when paying with the card's magnetic stripe, but not with the chip, if fitted.

And from cards to banks: the police chief of the of London City has reported that banks in the UK do not report 80% of sustained attacks. According to him, it is easier to pass cybercrime expenses as entity expenses. According to police, if banks would report all incidents, fraud losses would twice his size.

We´ll finish a webcast which invites reflection: more and more countries are entering the play into cyberwar, using "black hats" tools and espionage tactics, whose victims are civilians and companies, from whom they steal intellectual property and customer databases, when they are not bombing their networks. Are we all caught in the cyberwar crossfire?

Hopefully, everything will gradually stabilize and there will be clearer rules of the game for everyone.